Win7 freeze/won't boot to Windows. Linux boots fine

[Paladin565]

This problem started with a random freeze while playing a game. No recent driver changes were made to the computer, but there was an update to the game shortly before problems began.

System froze completely and had to be forced (hold power 4+ seconds) to shut down. On reboot it stalled on the "Starting Windows" screen. Linux partition that I have on the drive boots fine, but I cannot access the windows part from it. To be honest I'm not sure of thats me (I'm a nub when it comes to linux) or something else.

I reboot using the windows 7 disk and try to chkdsk on the drive.. which takes HOURS. (12+) and get things like not enough space to apply fix or file segment ##### unreadable. My apologies not the non specific descriptions there.. I neglected to write them down.

I've read through googling this may be a drive failure, though I wonder why I can still boot to linux with no problems if that's the case. I'm attempting to get the seagate drive diag tools on a USB stick to run on the drive.

I tried hooking the drive up to another computer via a USB adapter, however it didn't like that.. I suspect that would be because the drive is win7 64, and the computer I tried to hook it up to was winxp 32.

I would appreciate any thoughts on other things to check as I go about this. Thank you for your time in reading community.

 

[Paladin565]

Got seagate tools to run. It fails all tests and repairs with bad sectors everywhere. I guess the drive IS borked. I'll try to copy my Users directory to save my stuffs and get the IT guy at my school to RMA the drive.

 

[Archean]

Good luck with that, and hopefully it will resolve your issue. Kindly do let us know, if you need any assistance in future. Regards

 

[Paladin565]

after a nights sleep and some more googling I've found that bad sectors CAN be software caused. So I'm going to try and back up my user folder and reformat/reinstall on the drive. If I can't save my stuffs, I can get the IT guy to reimage the drive. (it's a laptop from school, hence the reference to IT guy all the time lol)

Here's hoping it's not actual physical hardware failure

 

[Archean]

I have never seen bad sectors being caused/created by software on a 'perfectly healthy' hard drive, but anyway, please do keep us posted.

 

[Paladin565]

Anyone have insight into what causes the chkdsk messages I pointed out in the OP? I had never seen those before.

 

[Archean]

Linux boots because it should be on another partition, and it either have no bad sectors issues or if there are some, they are not affecting the OS in any way.

Secondly, chkdsk is trying to 'relocate' data from sectors it believe are 'failing' to cleaner area of hard drive, but as you said it come back with 'not enough' space message, meaning probably there are just too many of them, hence chkdsk gives this message.